Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 Idea KitBook Review

So you’ve got a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements and you use it for the regular stuff, red eye removal, picture cropping, fine tuning the color, but that’s about it. Oh sure you know you could do more with Adobe Photoshop Elements but you (like me) probably reason that whatever else you might be able to do would be difficult, time consuming and possibly of little practical value. Well Lisa Matthews is out to change your mind about extending your Adobe Photoshop Elements abilities with Adobe Photoshop Elements Idea Kit. Adobe Photoshop Elements Idea Kit is a different kind of book. It’s not a reference manual by any stretch of the imagination. Instead Adobe Photoshop Elements Idea Kit does provide something most books don’t: a bit of inspiration. The Idea Kit doesn’t house a whole slew of ideas but the ideas found between the covers are very useful and left me in a constant state of “Hey, why didn’t I think of doing that?” A few examples: Using Adobe Photoshop Elements to create a panoramic picture, a CD contact sheet and even a groovier than you thought possible T-shirt iron on (complete with ironing tips).

Of course all these ideas aren’t worth much if the instructions are hard to follow or so tedious that you’d never actually bother to attempt the project (notice how many people do macramŽ?). No worries about the clarity of the instructions, if you have trouble following this book you may want to take an English language refresher course at the local community college. The instructions aren’t overly tedious either, you never feel that you’ve wasted your time reading and working through a project. Still some of the projects would be hard to complete if you had to whip your own bit of Photoshop goodness for ragged picture corners or something, fortunately you don’t. Lisa Matthews includes a CD with a plethora of templates and other goodies you need to finish these projects. Here it’s important to remember that Lisa Matthews is a Photoshop uber guru so her stuff looks much better than what the average Joe could generate. Think of the CD as a low cost sampling of pro level goodies.

It’s hard to criticize this book on any one level, and I wish there were more books that focused the end product rather than the minutiae of a program. Still the book isn’t cheap and at $35.00 I expect more than 117 pages. Adobe Photoshop Elements Idea Kit is a real find for Adobe Photoshop Elements novices who want to get the most bang for their Adobe dollar and may even help intermediate users to think of new things to do with Adobe Photoshop Elements but I was left wanting a few more ideas.